


Fractures

by stopmopingstarthoping



Series: Time, Truth, Hearts [2]
Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst and Feels, Deities, M/M, Reunion Sex, Reunions, Rings, World of Ruin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-06
Updated: 2019-08-06
Packaged: 2020-08-10 03:34:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,980
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20128684
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stopmopingstarthoping/pseuds/stopmopingstarthoping
Summary: Nyx and Ignis are reunited, and try to fit the pieces of themselves back together.





	Fractures

**Author's Note:**

> “Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.”
> 
> ― Terry Pratchett

That first night was short and long all at the same time. The eternal velvety blackness of the sky mocked them. As the disbelief and joy of reunion sang under Nyx's skin, the hunger and regret for lost time howled its jangling, discordant echo. 

Nyx looked, really looked at Ignis where he sat next to him on the weathered old bed of the caravan. His gaze lingered on the deep red scar surrounding his closed eye like a sunburst, like the setting sun firing out red rays from its bright center. Something Nyx wondered if he'd ever see again. 

Ignis peered around his shoulder to angle his face toward Nyx's own, and Nyx noticed again how he did that by sound and touch alone. Nyx looked into a clouded seafoam iris and realized he wasn't the only one struggling with his emotions. That little quirk upward of Ignis’ eyebrows—Nyx knew that look. 

“Hey.” Nyx's voice came out like ground glass. 

“Hey.” Ignis smiled, but the word was soft. His head tipped down, just slightly. 

“This is a lot, huh?”

“Indeed.”

A long pause. 

“I had heard that you died. Long ago. Fighting Glauca.” Even now, Nyx could hear the anger boiling beneath the final words. That betrayal had cut deep, for all of them.

“I did. Die, I mean. Or at least, I agreed to. Wasn't so bad once it started—the dying part. The fight was pretty fucking bad.” Nyx's attempted laugh sounded more like a hiccup. Had he ever discussed this with anyone? He thought for a long while. 

No. No, he hadn't. Not with the ragged, scraped-together remnants of the Glaives, once he'd finally found them. Not with any of the random travelers who'd crossed his path. Not even with any of the series of barkeeps who'd watched him drink too much and ramble on: about Selena, about Galahd, about betrayal, about this stupid war and the darkness it had brought. On a few, painful occasions when he'd gotten way too drunk, even about Ignis himself. How the loss of him had eaten at Nyx, how he'd never gotten over the hollow feeling it had left behind. 

One of Nyx's hands—the heavily scarred one—slipped over their legs to twine fingers with Ignis’, and he started. Quietly and slowly at first, drawing the memories up from a long-covered well. 

* * *

Dawn had begun to crest in yellow streaks on the horizon, and Nyx had stared down the black, expanding horror of the fact that he was out of time. 

Just as he’d closed his eyes and leaned back, ready to drift away, a low boom had sounded behind his ears, and he'd been back in the throne room again. 

“You've gotta be kidding me.” The laugh that had gusted out of him in disbelief had echoed, had reverberated against...walls? Nyx couldn't tell. He'd been surrounded again by ghostly, shadowy figures. This hadn't gone all that well the previous time, and Nyx's gaze had darted around the room, or space, or whatever it was. 

She'd stepped forward slowly, the elaborate horns of her helmet bobbing with her steps. “I have never been one for following the usual rules.” Dark lips had curved in a grin, and Nyx had thought he caught a hint of respect in her smirk and swaggering gait as she approached him. 

Whoever this had been—at that particular moment, Nyx had regretted sleeping through most of his Lucian history classes in school—she hadn't seemed to want to light him up like a torch again. So that had been something. 

“You fought well. I admire your spirit. Go.”

_ Go? Does that mean—? _

A wave of unspoken disapproval had rolled off the other huge figures encircling him. She'd held up her hand. “I am not alone in this.”

Beside her, Nyx had seen a too-familiar suit of armor, shimmering, barely holding together. His throat had tightened, and he'd felt rather than heard words from a voice he knew. _ Watch over him. Please. _

Nyx had known immediately who he meant, and he'd given a salute and a decisive nod. 

Nyx had felt himself draw a breath, and then he had been thrown back into his exhausted body atop the ruins of Insomnia. Gone were the glowing golden cracks in his skin; they had been replaced by red, angry scars. Everything had hurt. Nyx had let his head rest back on some rubble and let out a low, rueful laugh from the depths of his chest. He'd closed his eyes against the warmth of the sun and begun the agonizing process of hauling himself up. He had people to live for. 

* * *

Nyx finished the telling, and Ignis’ other hand smoothed tentatively into his hair. 

Ignis didn't ask the questions others had asked him: why he'd put the ring on, what had happened after that, how he'd done it. Ignis didn't need to. The question he did ask, though, drove straight through Nyx's heart and out the other side. 

“When it was over...when you realized it hadn't killed you?”

Nyx nodded, and squeezed Ignis’ hand. 

“Were you disappointed?”

Nyx's head jerked up in alarm. “No. Just fucking relieved.” 

Ignis hummed, and nodded. “I suppose you did win your fight.” He quieted, and Nyx scanned him with a growing amount of worry. Had this whole process broken something in him? Did Ignis have some sort of death wish? 

“Waking up to failure was—perhaps not my finest moment. I also thought...hoped...it's silly superstition.” Ignis let out a long, quavering sigh, pulled off his visor, and dragged a sleeve over his eyes.

Nyx wondered if Ignis had been hoping he'd see Nyx again. Realized that to Ignis, Nyx had been unreachable except on the off chance that the cursed Astrals saw fit to reunite them in the afterlife. Silent, he stared at their joined hands for a moment before speaking again. 

“Thought you were dead too, you know. After that. Worst news I ever got.”

Ignis nodded sadly. “We figured it was safer that way. To let the rumors lie. If I had known—I'm so sorry.”

Nyx thought about how Ignis had been busy grieving for _ him _at the time and just shook his head. “It took way too fucking long, and I'm always gonna be pissed about losing those years with you. But…"

Pissed at himself, mostly. When Nyx had heard what had gone down in Altissia, he'd struck out on his own, fighting daemons and helping people here and there but moving, always moving. Looking, without success, for the Prince—King, by then—only to hear that he'd gone. Why he'd believed Ignis dead, given all the weird rumors flying around; it had been stupid. 

"Yes?" 

Instead of words, Nyx kissed Ignis, hard, and Ignis's breath dragged in sharply under his lips before he returned it with full force. Nyx gripped Ignis’ shoulder and tugged at his hair a little, keeping him fully here and now, feeling and hurting and _ real_. 

Ignis kissed him back like a promise, and ferocity gathered until Nyx was pressed back against a threadbare pillow, gasping. Ignis made love to Nyx with all the knowledge of their first times together, and a defiance that it would not be their last.

* * *

If there could still be a thing called morning, this was it. Waking with legs tangled, easing back to consciousness with the feel and the smell of his lover next to him: Nyx knew that no matter how many more days, weeks, years they might get to have, he’d never tire of this. No shafts of light to greet them these days, but the smile that gleamed at Nyx was the next best thing. He looked at the figure sitting up next to him, skating a gaze over the outlines of his body, then sat up behind him.

Nyx ran his hands over Ignis’ shoulders. “You got bigger,” he mumbled around the skin under his lips. Ignis tossed his head and wriggled playfully in Nyx's grasp. He turned his head over one shoulder to angle his voice at Nyx, casting those familiar sharp angles he'd never get tired of following with eyes, fingertips, tongue… 

“Nyx Ulric, are you implying that I have put on weight?”

Nyx cracked up and laid a kiss on the cheek turned toward him. “No, you vain thing, I am not. You bulked up; filled out. Seven years is a long time.” The momentary wistfulness in his voice was soothed away by the caress of palms skating over Ignis’ chest, and he relaxed into the embrace. “I like it.” 

A laugh bubbled low in Ignis’ chest. He tipped his head back, searching for Nyx's lips. Nyx laid a hand against his cheek and pulled Ignis’ mouth to his own. Seven years had been a long time, but not long enough for Nyx to forget the joy of Ignis’ body in his arms. Relearning each other was a strange mixture of regret and gratitude, but today Nyx eagerly swallowed the bitterness of time lost with the sweetness of finding each other again. _ Worth the price, _he thought to himself, maybe for the first time. 

Ignis turned in Nyx's arms and pushed him back gently, crawling over him to touch their lips together. Wisps of undone hair swept down and tickled Nyx's forehead, grown long in the years of darkness. Nyx liked that too, and he pushed his fingers into light brown strands, darker now without the sun. 

If anything, Nyx himself had grown leaner, whipcord-strong still but sharper, meaner, more wiry. Ignis didn't seem to mind, though. He grabbed Nyx's ass just as eagerly as when Nyx had been fed on a healthy Citadel salary, sliding both palms under to get a good handful. Nyx laughed, and flexed his hips up to give Ignis a better grip. His knees slid up around Ignis’ still-lithe frame; despite Nyx's observations about the additional muscle Ignis had added to his frame between twenty-two and twenty-nine, Ignis retained the same sinuous, catlike grace he'd always had. 

Their lovemaking last night had been fervent and filled with emotion; today the need rose strong again, but playful. 

“You want me this time?”

Ignis let his grin deepen knowingly, and Nyx thought to himself how much he liked the additional confidence that had settled on Ignis’ shoulders along with that Glaive jacket. He tilted his head up and pressed a kiss to the smirk above him, feeling the scar that split Ignis' lower lip. It had healed with time, but would always show the impact, like the two of them, Nyx thought. He traced his tongue across that lip to feel Ignis shudder and smirked to himself. Not _ everything _had changed. 

* * *

The clatter of the knife was loud in the kitchen, and Nyx stepped into the room with a bit of concern. He saw a slightly embarrassed Ignis pick the blade up from the floor and step over to wash it in the sink.

“It's fine. This sort of thing does happen, but rarely. It's just..." He set the cleaned knife on the counter and sighed, squeezing one hand with the other in frustration.

Nyx looked at him, unconsciously flexing his own hand. "Nerve damage. Yeah."

Yeah. Hands that weren’t the same, but could still throw a dagger, wield a knife. Could still make breakfast, could still reach up to grasp Nyx’s arm as he wound it around Ignis and pulled him close.

Neither of them were the same, or ever would be, and Nyx knew they’d continue to find these odd spaces within each other, unhealed scars, tender places of pain; some that could be shared and some that could not.

But it was better than the godsdamned alternative, and as Nyx pressed a rough kiss to Ignis' temple, he felt Ignis nestle back into him and knew he understood.

**Author's Note:**

> Incorporates Ignyx Week 8/4 prompt "ring," and answers the question I've been asked about my HCs for how Nyx survived the Ring in this AU.
> 
> Come chat with me on Tumblr or Twitter - I have pretty much the same username everywhere. Thank you for reading!
> 
> Edit: [ Flavoredmagpie made BEAUTIFUL art](https://stopmopingstarthoping.tumblr.com/post/187171272468/check-it-out-flavoredmagpie-with-another), apparently inspired by this fic, it's wonderful.


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